1 John 5:1
“Everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.” (1 John 5:1b)
All the infinite variety of potential loves can be divided into four groups: love for God, love for others, love for self, and love for things. It is quite possible to love many people and even many things at once without any sense of competition or conflict. But often there is conflict among the “loves,” and nothing can be more painful and destructive. Today let us consider two of those loves.
Love for God. Christ tells us that this is the supreme objective: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Matt. 22:37). This is the first command, first in importance, and the greatest, superseding all others as the controlling authority of life. Thus the Old Testament command (Deut. 6:5) identified by the teachers of Israel as the ultimate, comprehensive summary of God’s will for man was affirmed by Jesus the Messiah as the most important commandment of all.
How does a mere human being love the infinite God? By the loving adoration of worship, by unceasing thanksgiving, by a life of steadfast obedience, by sharing his companionship and exulting in the endless profusion of his gifts. This is the goal of creation and redemption: to love God. Not so much to find my fulfillment, but to find his, to bring him joy, to seek his purposes, to do his will.
Indeed, to love God is the first and great commandment, but it is not the only commandment. The “law and the prophets” do not depend on this alone. There is another commandment. And, in truth, one cannot obey the first without obeying the second.[105]
Love for self. Contemporary psychology, in seeking to make people whole, is committed to the “cult of self-worship.” Apparently in accommodation to this pervasive atmosphere, there is a tidal wave of Christian promotion of self-love as the biblical norm, so that self-discovery, self-affirmation, self-assertion, self-fulfillment, self-actualization, self-worth, self-esteem, self-importance are all advocated as worthy objectives for the Christian. In fact, we are told, we cannot be whole without them. How does this fit with the Bible’s injunctions to self-sacrifice, self-crucifixion—indeed, with the command to hate oneself? (See Luke 14:26). Part of the problem is in the definition of “self-love,” and part is a basic ideological difference.
The term self-love can be used to mean either “self-centeredness” or “self-acceptance.” If we have in mind self-centeredness, no Christian would advocate it; if we have in mind self-acceptance, there is something to discuss. Since the term is ambiguous, perhaps we avoid it. But the problem is not just a matter of semantics.
No, we are not commanded to love ourselves—we are built that way. Yet some are so strong on self-sacrifice that they hold self-love to be wrong. Is not self-love a mark of the utter decadence of the end times (1 Tim. 3:2)? Did not Christ himself say that a person should hate himself? We are called upon to deny self or to deliberately choose to reject self-interest in favor of God’s interests or even those of another person. The one who “loves” his own life (his own self) is the one who affirms his own rights and self-interest at all costs. In the final analysis, he loses his own life – the very thing for which he was grasping.
The contemporary notion is that wholeness begins with self-affirmation and ends with self-fulfillment, whereas Scripture teaches that wholeness begins with self-denial and ends with God’s fulfillment. If one begins with self-affirmation and makes self-fulfillment the primary goal of life, neither that person nor God will find fulfillment in their life. But if you make the fulfillment of God’s purposes in this world your goal, God will be satisfied and glorified, and you will find, as a by-product, the fulfillment of the purpose for which God created and redeemed you. That is true self- fulfillment.
If a person actually hates himself emotionally, dislikes himself, he is abnormal. And nonacceptance of self is indeed a great problem. Many psychologists seek to solve this problem by convincing a person that he is truly worthy or that he is not guilty. Building a high view of oneself is never given in Scripture as a solution to any problem. Such a “solution” only compounds the problem, for sooner or later the hurting person will discover that he really is not all that important in the eyes of others and that he truly is guilty.
The biblical solution to this problem is very different. It is the assurance that God forgives and accepts us. We are responsible for what we do and what we have become; we really are guilty. But the guilt has been done away with. And if God accepts us, we can certainly accept ourselves. Furthermore, Scripture teaches that we are created in the image of God and that we were created and saved on purpose. Though we may not be important or significant to anyone else, we are that important to God. What a self-image: created in God’s likeness, redeemed at infinite cost, and invested with a unique purpose in life by God himself!
This great self-discovery of who I am in Christ then frees me and makes me strong to hate and exterminate the evil in myself and to sacrifice (self-denial) my own rights and even my own welfare for others. Now I can gratefully accept what I am—and what I am becoming—as God’s loving gifts.
From this comes a biblical concept of self-image. A “strong” self-image is that perception of self which is true, which is most nearly aligned with the facts, including all the weakness and corruption that is mine by nature and all the glory that is mine by grace.
Self-love, then, properly defined, is recognized by Scripture as the way God made us. To treat self in this way is to be in alignment with reality and thus to promote wholeness.
[105] Matt. 22:34-40; 1 John 3:11-18; 4:19–5:1